Blind girl challenges Putin in blog

Moscow

A BLIND Russian high schooler’s impassioned criticism of the ban on adoption by Americans has added a new and compelling voice to the chorus of condemnation of the law.

Since her January 6 blog entry complaining about the ban, written as an open letter to President Vladimir Putin, Natasha Pisarenko has attracted the wide attention of Russian media and, she fears, drawn the disapproving notice of authorities.

Natasha Pisarenko in class at her school in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. Photo: AP

The adoption ban, which went into effect on January 1, is one of the most controversial moves of the first year of Putin’s third term in the Kremlin. It was enacted as part of a bill retaliating for a new US law that calls for sanctions against Russians deemed to be human rights violators.

But critics say it punishes innocent children by denying them a chance of escaping Russia’s often-dismal orphanages.

Around 20,000 people held a protest march against the measure in Moscow on Sunday that included banners likening Putin to King Herod, whom the Bible says ordered the massacre of Jewish male infants.

Natasha wrote sarcastically that by signing the law, Mr Putin was ‘‘saving children from American evil’’ and said that Russians rarely adopt disabled children because the country’s medical system is backward and can’t take care of them.

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‘‘They die because Russia doesn’t have modern medicine,’’ she wrote.

Natasha, blind from birth, writes that she has painful personal experience with Russia’s medical inadequacy. She says that although her father detected her blindness within days of her birth, Russian doctors were unable to diagnose it for months. But, she says, she received precise diagnosis and the hope of treatment from German and American doctors.

‘‘For Russian doctors, I am a child with an illness of unknown aetiology . . . but in Germany and America I am a patient whose sight the doctors are trying to restore,’’ she wrote.

Concluding her post, Natasha called on Mr Putin to adopt five or 10 children with serious congenital disorders.

Mr Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by a local radio station as saying: ‘‘Of course we will pay attention to such a statement.

‘‘This girl is well known to us, she’s known by the regional authorities and by the health ministry,’’ he said.

In a later post, Natasha expressed worry that her letter would cause her parents to be called in for questioning by regional authorities.